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well, I was hoping there would be gain in performance, but as all is the same, a netbook may last 1 month in battery, if all runs slow it won't matter. I have an Acer running second gen Atom and Vista, and it has no hurry whatsoever to do anything.

I agree.Brazos is a big winner for mobile.Of course, since Intel is sponsoring much of teh ultrabook development, they'll have a huge spot anyway.Still, I look forward to a comparison between cedar trail and brazos.Since "Krishna" and "Wichita" seem to have been canceled (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Fusion), to be replaced by a version with an "enhanced bulldozer" core, I wonder how will the competition be in 2012.I have an E350 (on an HP DM1Z) and could not be happier. Well, no, I could: power is never enough, but it is lightyears from the older Atoms.

It would be nice an in depth comparison between Cedar Trail and Brazos, as well as some updated info on AMD's plans for 2012...Reply

Agreed. I also cannot believe WHY Intel would release this junk at this time. They have nothing else better to do?. In the time where most OEMs are giving up on netbooks and going towards tablets, this chip is about 4 years late yet under performing in graphics. A real shame.Reply

I guess it all depends upon how diverse the "integrated full HD video decode" and "HD audio" actually is. Dual-core (4 threads) plus truly FULL video decode beyond just H.264 should be plenty fast for many people. If the the video decode also properly transmits 1080p at 23.976Hz instead of 24.000Hz (unlike Sandy Bridge) along with HD audio codecs, then this could be a VERY popular low-power HTPC platform. But we'll have to wait for more details.Reply

If the N2600 can be made fanless, why not? I have an Oak Trail based tablet I'm using right now, and the damn thing's useless. For basic, basic tasks I don't think it needs a lot more punch, but 4GB of DDR3 and dual cores would make a huge difference in what is an extraordinarily frustrating experience right now. With any luck, we'll see some tablets coming soon at CES.Reply

Well. That is a reason I got MSI Windpad 110w with AMD APU. Upgraded Toshiba slow SSD with Adata 60 Gb one and now this thing is a blast. With HDMA I connected this thing to 46" LCD and it is a great player 1080p.No Atom can touch it (did I say it last about 4 hours on battery).So this new refreshed ATOMs are waist of time. Reply

It would be nice to see Intel fix their long-standing architectural error of separating out the memory controller and processor cores. (For those unaware, they're on the same piece of silicon but are still on separate devices with a very short FSB connecting them). This approach seems like it would save power and die area compared to Intel's current Clarkdale-esque method, but who knows. The big deal is improving memory latency and throughput, which can help a LOT on devices with integrated graphics. Overall it seems like Intel just isn't trying very hard, something they can only get away with because AMD has had trouble scaling production of their Brazos APUs.Reply

The lack of mention, combined with Intel repeatedly stating the new atom architechture won't launch until 2013 almost certainly means no change. Ripping out on-die FSB would be a major change; intel would've had to commit to doing this a few years ago to create an intermediate part between the current platform and Atom2013. Since Intel was heavily talking up Atom as its gateway to phones initially I suspect the sucess of the netbook/nettop platforms caught them by surprise and it was too late for an intermediate design to be inserted into the lineup.Reply

Netbooks cost half as much as even the cheapest iPad and a quarter as much as an Ultrabook. There's probably not much of a market for these in the USA and Europe anymore, but I'm guessing they do pretty well in East Asia, India, and South America.Reply

Apple's story for low-end devices is simple --- if you want a cheap MacBook, you buy it on eBay, not from Apple. It's slower and not as pretty --- what do you expect for something cheaper --- but it does the job.I suspect that many Netbook owners would do well to follow the same model. If you're buying a Netbook solely because you want something cheap, you're probably better off buying a year-old laptop from eBay.Reply

Try to shoot 32-128 GB of video on a trip and load that into your iPad. Netbooks still do large storage on the go better than any tablet. That will be true for some time yet. So don't let your biases and lack of creative thinking dis something you have not all the way through about.Reply

So when is Intel going to reward us with an out of order low power architecture? So far, all Atom advancements have been rather sad. Since Atom arrived, both ARM and AMD have surpassed it. When is Intel going to bring out the big guns? So far, it looks like a pretty aimless product line with little hope of success. Like Intel graphics, it's another "wait until next time" marketing job. Reply

Atom still smokes even the fastest ARM CPUs, and Zacate plays in what is essentially a completely different TDP range. This is just an incremental update enabled by a process shrink - they'll update the architecture when they feel like they need to.Reply

Can it be the same company that produces this as that produces Sandy Bridge? Unbelievable that they could not make more improvements than this in all these years. I have been looking at getting a tablet, but still would almost prefer a netbook if they came with something besides atom. My ideal would be something like the HP dm1 with the E450, but at a netbook price. Right now, it is running more than 400.00 which seems like a lot for a netbook size device. If something like that could be avaliable for 300.00, that would be awesome.Reply

While I think this chip should have better battery life than an E350, I am really wondering if its going to be any faster. The graphics certainly are less than spectacular, even my phone has far faster graphics (543MP2) and it runs a lower resolution.

Its almost comical how Intel's high end parts are blind blowing fast, yet their low end stuff is just so lacking in any sort of real updates. Combined with the delays that it has had, they are leaving this market wide open for AMD.Reply

I highly doubt your phone's graphics are "far faster". Remember, typically PowerVR GPUs are clocked at 200MHz, maybe 300 at most. This thing has a SGX545 running at 640MHz, should more than compensate for being single core.

That said, PowerVR Windows drivers... Even worse than Intel's, while AMD and nVidia are both on another level. Reply

The tablet-friendly low-TDP atom part has a PowerVR running @400MHz, meanwhile the TI OMAP 4460 (eg. Galaxy Nexus, Moto RAZR) has the same chip running @384Mhz, just barely slower. But then both the Apple A5 and Samsung Exynos are far superior in terms of graphical prowess.Reply

With the N2600's ~1.9 watt kit average power requirement, it looks like maybe you could add 512 MB of RAM and an Intel 320 SSD for a home server that draws about 3 watts at the wall. On the other hand, I have never seen anyone look at power supply efficiency at these output levels.

Currently I draw about 22 watts for a router/firewall/p2p daemon station and electricity costs $10/watt for 3 years 24/7 use. Switching to 3 watts saves me $190 in electric bills every 3 years. I have a soft spot for free stuff that works.

There is some disagreement whether AMD's recent success in the netbook space is due to their gaming excellence or the fact that they do 1080p and Atom does not. The release of Cedar Trail should provide more insight on that question. I never really bought the line that netbooks are the next credible gaming platform.Reply

It wont would be my guess. You can't buy new Netbooks with XP anymore (unless they are just left over NOS or something). With as many driver issues as Intel has had with this chip, I doubt they are going to put them time into making an old unsupported OS work.Reply

If you look at the first really big blue box above, it is using complicated words to say that this System on a Chip ("SOC") is fully integrated including everything that should be there. Out of deference to a former Alaska governor some consider it impolite to use the "R" word. In your case, I suspect people would understand your intent if you said, for example, "Intel is really mirror." Reply

So now that Atom is going all out PowerVR - which is very nice from a perf per watt point of view - but where does this leave open source support? Linux on PowerVR is a miserable experience. The bleeding edge is more or less at the svga-level (when it happens to work), and even that hasn't really reached any distro release yet.

I suspect any decent level of acceleration will be limited to closed firmwares/platforms, as it is today.Reply

The SGX 545 is capable of DX10.1, but is probably listed as DX9 due to driver issues.

These Atoms will take a lot less power than the AMD solution, and one is even designed for fanless systems, so I think they could be interesting solutions. We'll have to wait and see. There's also the price aspect, and looks like Intel is aiming lower than where AMD currently sits.Reply

When intel launched it it was at 45nm, and is listed in their ark database as a 2.1W part; but the tables above are implying it as only 1.5W (5/8W total, 3.5/6.5W for the CPU). Either way it's a rather large chunk of the total, and dropping to 32nm should chop a decent chunk off the total allowing for either longer battery life or marginally higher processor clocks. (1.73 and 2.0 ghz mobile?)Reply

The new high speed wifi "WiGig" routers from Orbital use this processor in their low end routers the Phantom and the Spitfire. FOr the high end they even use core I3'sTheir 802.11ad draft goes to 10G/sec wireless with these chips and can stream up to 2 movies simultaneously to different screens over the WiFi

I shall warn users of the N2600 about x64 Windows support or I should say, the lack of it. The platform would be perfect for MS Home Server 2011... if Intel cares to support it. I don't need to increase memory, just to install the software which is impossible at this time. The alternative is to run a x86 version of Win 7 or, if the target software would allow, Linux. The excuse from Intel is that they are too busy with Win 8....Go figure...By the way, board is a Jetway NF9C-N2600 with a crippled BIOS for x64, since some of the drivers from Intel are thin.Reply

...and see what the OS difference does for the performance of both the Atoms AND AMDs. Of course, beta is beta, but I have doubled my battery and there are half the processes running at any time with the same program loadout and similar registry.

Maybe Intel is waiting for the OS. I think that, at 3200, if you could get a cheap touchscreen into a convertible, I have a feeling that, while it won't actually scream, you won't notice nearly as much of a decline in performance...except for that sticky 1080p thing....Reply